... Chauncey Holt and the three 'tramps' on Dealey Plaza Robin Ramsay T he Kennedy assassination is now a vast field of subjects and I recently wandered into one: the three 'tramps' photographed being taken into custody on Dealey Plaza after the shooting. This is a classic JFK assassination quagmire:1 disputed photographic IDs; testimony from unreliable or self- interested sources; third-hand reports about second-hand reports, and a great backlog of attempts by other people to sort the shit from the shinola. Why bother? Well, I revisited the 'tramps' because I was thinking about Billie Sol Estes, who, in his memoir, stated that Mob bosses Marcello and Trafficante had arranged for some ...

... York: Bloomsbury; 2016, h/b, £18.99 P rofessor Mellen spoke about 'Mac' Wallace, who is one of the two subjects of this book, a couple of years ago in a lecture,1 and it was clear when this book was announced that it was going to try and debunk the LBJ-dunnit thesis in the JFK assassination. In Mellen's view, that thesis has just two planks: the fingerprint of Malcolm 'Mac' Wallace apparently found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD hereafter) just after the assassination and the allegations of the late Billie Sol Estes. The fingerprint issue is dealt with by an expert hired by Mellen. ...

... The View from the Bridge (a kind of blog) Robin Ramsay Jackie doesn't flinch (and other JFK bits and pieces) There are lots of bits of film on YouTube about the Kennedy assassination and I've looked at many. Recently I clicked on one made by one George Jettison, which opens with him  a large bearded figure  talking to his camera.1 I don't know why I stayed with it when the picture froze leaving just his voice, but I did; and just as well. Jettison eventually shows the Zapruder film on his computer, freezes it at the frame which shows the head shot and says that the big wound on JFK's right temple which appears after ...

... up and thrown backwards'. As for the shooter being knocked backward... Yes, the shooter would be knocked backwards if the bullet was prevented from going forward, but it isn't. The energy released by the propellant is transferred to the unhindered projectile. The authors do not even understand basic ballistics. They noted: 'Oliver Stone's JFK asserted that the bullet would have had to follow a zigzag course to hit both JFK and Governor Connally. That would be true only if you assume that they were sitting straight forward like graven images. If you assume instead that they were acting like politicians, turning and waving to the crowd, they would be lined up perfectly for ...

... plot existed to force Clinton to sign the act there isn't. Though this is all tremendously entertaining, there is one striking blank spot: his belief that the paranoids are right about contemporary America does not extend to the assassinations in the 1960s. Vidal devotes many pages to Timothy McVeigh but only a few lines to the assassination of his friend JFK (and none at all to RFK). Reviewing Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot, he comments on p. 125: 'Hersh does not take his book where it is logically headed.... the murder in Dallas, and what looks to be a mob killing. Too many lunatics have already checked in on that ...

... the CIA planned to force Kennedy into supporting the invasion when it foundered 7  and into JFK's assassination, where they do a version of the standard historians' body swerve round the subject: 'The almost-certain assassin, a troubled former marine named Lee Harvey Oswald... (p. 227). Similarly they are carefully sceptical and non-committal about JFK and Vietnam:'....over time [JFK] became increasingly sceptical about South Vietnam's prospects and hinted that he would seek an end to the U.S. commitment...a few authors have gone further and argued that JFK had quietly commenced a withdrawal from Vietnam...the evidence for this claim is thin.'( ...

... us to have mutual understanding and goodwill among men occupying the highest positions in the life of each country than to try to influence the man in the street directly. Retinger describes the formation of the group, the thinking behind it, the early meetings and personnel.8 None of this is new but this is the horse's mouth, as it were. JFK and withdrawal from Vietnam It has become taken for granted by many JFK researchers that JFK planned to withdraw US armed forces from Vietnam. (This was one of the central themes in Oliver Stone's film JFK, for example.) On this thesis, JFK researcher, Robert Dorff, has pointed out that in an interview in April 1964 ...

... through to Watergate- and beyond. Vol. 2 no. 3, for example is a special edition on Watergate. But it includes a piece on Alger Hiss- who launched Nixon's career. (The fact that I didn't catch up with Probe until vol. 3 no. 2 tells you have far I am from being a serious JFK buff.) The problem with the JFK thing is that it has now ramified so far- and as the material in this issue, the Scott extract and Frewin's literature survey, shows, is ramifying further and further- it is very hard to keep track of. For example: the leading (ten page) article in Probe ...

... (c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 35) Summer 1998 Last| Contents| Next Issue 35 Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out On the Death of JFK Edited by James H. Fetzer Catfeet Press, Chicago Distributed in the UK by The Eurospan Group, 3 Henrietta St, London WC2E 8LU at £29.50 (hb) £14.95 (pb) This is a very important contribution to the primary research on the Kennedy assassination. It contains essays which prove (a) that the Zapruder film was substantially edited and cannot be taken as anything like a real record of the event, and (b) that the autopsy X-rays were faked. Both claims have been made before but ...

... as it were Anthony Frewin The Oswald Code Alan Jules Weberman New York: Independent Research Associates, 2014, 300 pps. Illustrations, notes, index, $17.00 (amazon) Alan Jules Weberman or, more familiarly, A J Weberman, is widely known as a garbologist, Dylanologist, and as the author of a book on the JFK assassination.1 The main title page has a photograph captioned in caps THE AUTHOR SUMMER 1963 HITCHING TO THE YUCATAN. Just why this photo is positioned so prominently here and its significance are unexplained. Could it be that the author wanted to prove he was actually about in the year that JFK was assassinated, and therefore qualified to write about it ...